For Vincent

[Mario Levesque]

Vincent,
Do you have to read all chapters of your book in sequence to get up to speed on testing?
Also, are there chapters that cover special subjects would not necessarily be found in an average project?
Thanks,
Mario

[Faisal Khan]

In line with the above, my skills of testing are pretty abysmal and pretty much confined to what we learnt at University. Would this book help me to get up to speed on at least the unit testing aspect and teach me some MUST DOs and NEVER DOs?

[Vincent Massol]

Originally posted by Mario Levesque:
Vincent,
Do you have to read all chapters of your book in sequence to get up to speed on testing?
Also, are there chapters that cover special subjects would not necessarily be found in an average project?
Thanks,
Mario

Hi Mario,
Yes and no... Almost every chapter can be read independently of the others. The book is divided in 3 parts:
- Part I: getting test infected
- Part II: testing strategies
- Part III: unit testing J2EE components
Although you can read every chapter independently, your understand of a chapter will of course depending on your knowledge of unit testing. The book provides an easy progression path from Part I to Part III. For example, it will difficult to read part III if you have no knowledge of JUnit nor of Cactus/Mock Objects strategies (which are explained in Part II). You'll be able to follow it and type the examples but you may not understand everything.
-Vincent

[Vincent Massol]

Originally posted by Faisal Khan:
In line with the above, my skills of testing are pretty abysmal and pretty much confined to what we learnt at University. Would this book help me to get up to speed on at least the unit testing aspect and teach me some MUST DOs and NEVER DOs?

Hi Faisal,
Yes, the book starts easy (not assuming any previous knowledge) and through examples and hands-on practices tells you what to do and what not to do, highlighting the best practices as you go.
-Vincent

[Tina Coleman]

In line with the previous questions on what your book covers, are there any topics that you would like to revisit in a second edition, or any new directions for JUnit since you first conceived of the book? I keep seeing JUnit being used more and more heavily, and thus presumably in more and more interesting situations...

[Vincent Massol]

Originally posted by Tina Coleman:
In line with the previous questions on what your book covers, are there any topics that you would like to revisit in a second edition, or any new directions for JUnit since you first conceived of the book? I keep seeing JUnit being used more and more heavily, and thus presumably in more and more interesting situations...

Yes, I would like to cover using AOP for unit testing. I've been researching this subject for some time now but it's too early yet. I think it may flourish in not too long.
Also, I'd like to cover Swing unit testing (I've had some really interesting experience on the current project I'm working on).
What would you like to see in a second edition?

[Mario Levesque]

Thank you Vincent.
I need to add a formal testing portion to our project. I'll be looking for your book. Thanks again.
Mario

[Allan Halme]

What would you like to see in a second edition?

A point you already mentioned -- Aspects. I think that they are a philosophically sound technique for doing what is currently otherwise done with mock objects.

[Faisal Khan]

Vincent,
Thanks for being here and answering our questions. Another thing - does the book encourage developing test cases during the design phase or during development?
- FK -

[Vincent Massol]

Originally posted by Faisal Khan:
Vincent,
Thanks for being here and answering our questions. Another thing - does the book encourage developing test cases during the design phase or during development?
- FK -

During development. The book is about unit tests. These must be done during development. If you're talking about functional tests, my recommendation is to try to get them as soon as possible in the project's lifecycle, i.e. ideally you would get uses cases (UML for ex) + functional test cases at the same time and the goal of development is to implement code that passes these functional tests.